In Houston, employers expanded payrolls by about 11,000 jobs in November, and about 48,000 over the year. The city's annual job growth rate was 1.6 percent, well below the state's.

Last month, across Texas, the construction sector added 8,200 jobs, a 1.1 percent increase; retail, 6,300 – growing 0.5 percent. Those two sectors were bolstered by repair work in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and the holiday shopping season, respectively.

Leisure and hospitality jobs increased by 8,000; accommodation and food services, by 9,100. Those were followed by health care (6,700), manufacturing (2,700) real estate (2,400) and local government (1,600).

In mining and logging, the category that encompasses the state's vast oil and gas industry, payrolls expanded by 1,300 in November.

Since this time last year, oil companies have hired some 32,800 new workers, the TWC data indicates, marking a vast improvement over previous years when drillers and energy service firms laid off one in three oil industry workers across the state.